Released in cinemas in 1970, Eden et après (4) is a hallucinatory tale following the steps of a young woman, drunk with desire, wandering the streets of Djerba and Bratislava in search of a disappeared painting. In his first feature film in colour – in which, by the way, some of said colours are purposefully missing, just like the equally absent green in Mondrian’s compositions, a direct reference to which is found in the architecture of the café specifically conceived for the film – the initiator and “pope” of the Nouveau Roman (5) develops a new way of approaching filming. Indeed, the film was shot without a synopsis, its author’s principal motivations for proceeding to film being based on his admiration for the principal actress. After this adventure, Alain Robbe-Grillet set up an experimentation on cinematographic collage, in particular by proposing a completely new reediting of the film under the – as much enigmatic as it is anagrammatic – title N. a pris les dés ... (6) This second assemblage offers a fascinating rereading in which the narrator invents diverse intricate fictions based on the same images. N. a pris les dés ... is thus not a simple negation, but rather reveals itself more as the harbinger of an imminent action. More than anything else, “N” is the principal character of this second feature film, the very one gambling the film on dice and amusedly questioning the actress about what she is searching for.

- What are you looking for, exactly?
- That is not specified. A reminding sign, without a doubt.

This marvellous invention that is the voice-over – so important in the eyes of the directors of another avant-garde of the time, the Nouvelle Vague! – is this new edit’s identity but also the direction that this exhibition wishes to follow; the question, in effect, not being to know the stories told by these successive edits anymore, but rather to know who they are told by. Through this voice-over’s subtle intervention, this conversational continuity, the spectator is ceaselessly led to becoming aware of the different levels of combined narratives. So what does he see? What does he search for? What kind of game tricks with him? Alain Robbe-Grillet gives the following elements responding to this delicate question: “A game never means anything beforehand, it is the player who invents the game and the player is you. The images caught by your gaze here and there are nothing more than images. They have no meaning attached to them like an indelible nature. They don’t have any meaning other than the one you will have chosen yourself. It is you creating the reassuring order, the despairing order, either by laziness or by fear.” (7)

The exhibition pursues the dreamlike and vertiginous game of infinite compositions, based in particular on the multiple sensations of déjà-vu and the power of Robbe-Grillet’s genius’ imagination (8). It combines works by David de Tscharner, Noa Giniger, Nick Oberthaler and Hanna Schwarz in order to propose a real invitation to dive into the blue into eden.

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4. Eden and after
5. Literally translated by “New Novel”
6. To watch the film online, please click here
7. 75’10’’- 75’41’’, N. a pris les dés, Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1972, colour, 76 minutes, Carlotta editions, 2013
8. One of the series subjected to the fate cast by the dice is, besides, titled Image, Imaginez (Image, Imagine). In the tableau orchestrating this combination of different possible cinematographic narratives, one can find, in particular, the themes of water, painting, labyrinth, the double…